I did swim yesterday even though I felt like total crap. I was and am in a flare and hormonal and just plain ugly. At 800 yards I felt like crying. Heck, my eyes started welling up inside my goggles and I am sure my face turned all purty red. I wanted to quit. In fact, I had told my friend Tracy earlier in the day that I wasn't going swimming because I felt so miserable but I threw my sad self into the car and drove to the pool. Sometimes being stubborn works for me.
I swam for 45 minutes but fell 300 yards short of my 2,100 goal. I could not squeeze out those last laps. I was being a baby and I wasn't fighting it for another five minutes.
While I was having my usual boring laps/internal discussion this horrendous smell hit me. It was enough to bring me up coughing and I notice the guy in the next lane was having a hard time too. What in the world I'm thinking ... and then it hits me, someone has marinated themselves in perfume. My head swiveled around to spot the offender and my eyes landed on her. This old lady with a, I'm not lying, metallic purple shower cap on her head was in the open portion of the pool. She was in the water up to her shoulders so the entire smell was rising up like a bad fart in a hot tub. I stopped breathing through my nose and opened my mouth only to feel a burning sensation. And then she smiled at me.
I quickly sunk down underwater and swam as far from her as I could on my half breath. I popped up and continued to swim, figuring I only had another 500 yards or so to do and I could hold my breath whenever I came near her.
When I stopped at the shallow end to adjust my goggles an old guy from two lanes over said, "What the hell is that smell?" I almost lost it and the lifeguard covered her laugh with a cough of her own.
I'm serious, it was awful. And she was just floating around the pool like she was Marilyn Monroe on a really sexy day.
I finished my laps before she got out of the pool and had just finished dressing in the locker room when she came in. She floated on her stinky cloud right over to the sauna where there was an "out of order" sign and said, "Darn! I so wanted to lie in the heat today." Oh my word, can you imagine the stench at 120 degrees? Shutter.
So while I am in no better mood, physically or emotionally, I will be heading out in a little over thirty minutes to hit the water again. I can only hope Mz Purple Shower Cap was only a visitor.